Jutland - british cordite storage

Øystein

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Just wondering, will Jutland take into account the fact that the Royal Navy ships at Jutland kept their cordite propellants in their gun turrets during the fight, and which caused some of their losses when said cordite caught fire and exploded?

My understanding was that it was to keep up the rapid fire the Royal Navy preferred to use.

Anyways, if it's going to be modeled, will there be alternative scenarios where you can opt to have the brits store the cordite according to regulations, which might mean a slower firing rate on the british ships?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland#Procedural_lapses)

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Øystein
 

bill44

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They also stacked it outside of the turrets, left the flash proof doors to the magazines open as well.
 

Bullethead

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It's actually a misconception to blame the Brit magazine explosions at Jutland on either a lack of flash-tight features or a careless failure to use those that existed. Similarly, it's a misconception to say that the Germans didn't blow up just because they had either better flash-tight equipment or used what they had. At the bottom line, the real reason that the Brits had main magazine explosions and the Germans didn't was the different chemical composition of their main gun propellants.

Brit cordite was hellish stuff that burned extremely rapidly, and this quickly produced massive, ship-rupturing gas overpressures, even when in the relatively open air of magazines instead of gun breeches, and even with relatively small amounts of cordite involved. German propellant, OTOH, didn't burn nearly so rapidly outside the guns, and thus did not produce the gas overpressures that tore the Brit ships apart. Thus, it really didn't matter how the Brits handled their cordite or what flash-tight features they put in their ships. Once cordite got burning anywhere along its path in a main turret, the ship was almost certainly doomed. German ships, OTOH, survived propellant fires inside the main magazines themselves.

Here are some examples to illustrate this:

Seydlitz at Dogger Bank
When both aft turrets burned out, over 6 tons of propellant went up in smoke, including some in the magazines themselves, not just in the hoists and working chambers. There was no explosion, just a big fire. There was more exposed propellant than there should have been, but that just increased the likelihood of the fire starting in the 1st place. The ship was never in any danger of sinking from this propellant fire by itself, because it didn't produce the gas pressure necessary to burst the ship's structure. The Germans were concerned that the heat from the fire in the main propellant magazines might cook off the shells stored on the deck above, not that the propellant itself would rip the ship apart.

Lion at Jutland
Fortunately for the Brits, the initial hit did not ignite any cordite. By the time the cordite did ignite about 20 minutes later, the magazines had been flooded. Thus, the fire only involved 6 or 8 charges, only about 1/10 of the amout of propellant involved in the Seydlitz fire, all of which were in hoist cages or protected waiting positions--no excess cordite lying around exposed. Yet the gas overpressure caused by the ignition of this small amount of cordite blew part of the turret armor off and seriously deformed the magazine bulkheads, even though the explosion was partially vented by the turret already missing a large chunk. If the magazines had not already been flooded, the ship certainly would have been blown in half. Even if the magazine doors had been closed and flash-tight from the outside in (which they weren't), the overpressure of just a few charges in the hoists would have pushed the doors aside and exposed unflooded magazines to flash.

WW2
It should be noted that even with the slightly less-dangerous WW2 version of cordite, and with all the flash-tight advances implemented since Jutland, Hood still blew up from a cordite magazine explosion (sorry JD). OTOH, when a bomb lit off Gneisenau's forward main magazine, over 23 tons of propellant burned (nearly 4x what Seydltiz suffered), all of which was in the magazine. Yet there was no explosion.
 
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Fairweather

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Refering to Hood, the shell hit in her aft magazines detonated in the region of 120 tons of ammunition. In WW1, the German cordite was kept in brass casings, while RN cordite was in silk bags, which, as you might expect, could catch fire much more easily. The high rate of fire and somewhat sloppy magazine methods (there were complaints after Jutland) were limited to the Battlecruiser Fleet, and not the whole fleet. There seems to be two camps on what caused the loss of Invincible, Indefatigable and Queen Mary.
 

HMSWarspite

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Refering to Hood, the shell hit in her aft magazines detonated in the region of 120 tons of ammunition. In WW1, the German cordite was kept in brass casings, while RN cordite was in silk bags, which, as you might expect, could catch fire much more easily. The high rate of fire and somewhat sloppy magazine methods (there were complaints after Jutland) were limited to the Battlecruiser Fleet, and not the whole fleet. There seems to be two camps on what caused the loss of Invincible, Indefatigable and Queen Mary.
if you are going to get technical, there are at least 2 camps on Hood as well! However you are right on gunnery differences between Grand Fleet and BC.
 
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Bullethead

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Refering to Hood, the shell hit in her aft magazines detonated in the region of 120 tons of ammunition.
That's kinda my point. All that went off at once, BOOM! The time from initial ignition to the ultimate disaster was only a fraction of a second. No chance at all for damage control to avert catastrophe. OTOH, German propellant burned slowly enough that damage control could extinguish magazine fires before the consumed the whole pile.

In WW1, the German cordite was kept in brass casings, while RN cordite was in silk bags, which, as you might expect, could catch fire much more easily.
The German cartridge cases didn't make as much difference as is often supposed. First off, for BB/BC guns, the charges were divided into the main and fore charges. Only the main charge was in a cartridge case, while the fore charge, which was 1/4 to 1/3 of the total propellant depending on the gun, was in a silk bag. Also, the cartridge cases seem to have been just as vulnerable to flash as silk bags, given that all those that had been removed from their magazine cases burned in Seydlitz, along with all the exposed fore charges. Charges still in their magazine cases, whether fore or main, didn't burn.

The high rate of fire and somewhat sloppy magazine methods (there were complaints after Jutland) were limited to the Battlecruiser Fleet, and not the whole fleet.
It doesn't seem to have mattered whether the magazine doors were open or closed. At the time of Jutland, no Brit magazine door was flash-tight going into the magazine from the handling room. And even if they had been, burning cordite in the hoist system created enough overpressure to open the magazines anyway, as shown by Lion's experience.

It is perhaps fortunate that the GF never met the HSF in circumstances where the HSF could shoot back effectively. Had it done so, some Brit BBs would probably have blown up like the BCs. The majority of Brit BBs had turret armor no thicker than 10", and German APC was capable of penetrating that much at fairly long range.

So like I said, the main culprit was the nature of the Brit cordite.

You might want to read Campbell's Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting starting halfway down page 368 and going to the top of page 381 for a through discussion of magazine explosion mechanisms, both at Jutland and elsewhere.
 
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Bullethead

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if you are going to get technical, there are at least 2 camps on Hood as well!
Still? Seems to me that was all settled once they found the wreck years ago. It definitely was the 3rd main magazine, not the torps, not the 2ndary magazines, not the AA rockets. There's still the question of what caused the explosion, but there are only so many ways the shell could have gotten into that magazine.

Here's info on the wreck site:http://www.hmshood.com/hoodtoday/index.htm

Here's a forensic analysis of the wreckage:http://www.sname.org/committees/design/mfp/website/recent/research/hood_bismarck_1.pdf
 

JebUSMC

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I remember watching a documentary on the finding of the hood wreck. That was one hellish explosion for it to travel from the #3 magazine all the way up to the #2 magazine. For those that didn't know, HMS Hood suffered two magazine explosions. The first caused by a shell entering #3 magazine. The second was touched off by the first after the pressure and flames traveled through the ship to the #2 magazine.
 

JebUSMC

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Will the volatile nature of British cordite be modelled in Jutland? The stuff claimed a number of ships, including Battleship Mikasa in 1905, Cruiser Tsukuba in 1917, Semi-Dreadnought Kawachi in 1918, Dreadnought Leonardo Da Vinci in 1916, Battleship HMS Bulwark in 1914, and Dreadnought HMS Vanguard in 1917. It seems that ships using British cordite tended to explode while ships using German cordite did not. Even the USS Maine used British cordite.
 

Bullethead

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For those that didn't know, HMS Hood suffered two magazine explosions. The first caused by a shell entering #3 magazine. The second was touched off by the first after the pressure and flames traveled through the ship to the #2 magazine.
I might have misread the stuff in the links I posted above, but I don't think this is correct. From what I understand, Hood's bow broke off simply from loads imposed by being raised up out of the water and then sinking. The break was at a structural discontinuity in the keel structure, a natural weak point. The bow broke off forward of A turret, and the A/B turret area of the main part of the hull doesn't appear to have blown up.
 

HReardon

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People unfamiliar with this period would have trouble understanding what fertile ground it is for contoversies. Here we are 92 years later and a mild explosion-cause/sinking-mechanism controversy is starting.

I wonder how exciting things will get in these forums once the game is released and we've had a chance to try out deploying to starboard, "turning towards" instead of "turning away" and in general, handing the Grand Fleet to a bunch of admirals who have no real long term consequences to face. I'm guessing a lot of engagements will be fought like Beatty was in command of both sides (I know mine will be). I, for one, just can't wait!

One wonders what the fallout from Jutland would have been had the internet been available in 1919 instead of open letters to newspapers. (kind of gives one visions of steam powered Turing machines and telegraph lines to the home. A bunch of guys hunched over punch-card machines, typing like mad.)
 

Bullethead

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Will the volatile nature of British cordite be modelled in Jutland? The stuff claimed a number of ships, including Battleship Mikasa in 1905, Cruiser Tsukuba in 1917, Semi-Dreadnought Kawachi in 1918, Dreadnought Leonardo Da Vinci in 1916, Battleship HMS Bulwark in 1914, and Dreadnought HMS Vanguard in 1917.
You forgot the AC Natal, the monitor Glatton, and the predreadnought Benedetto Brin :). And arguably Mutsu in WW2.

It's been said that the majority of casualties on both sides at Jutland were caused by Brit explosives.....

There's a lot of interesting reading on the web on most of these disasters. All of them were of course the subjects of courts martial and inquests, the findings of which usually can be Googled using the ship's name, "explosion", and "investigation" and/or "court martial".

IIRC, Brin was put down as Austrian sabotage, Bulwark and I think Mikasa as negligence with open flame, Natal as old cordite self-destructing, Glatton as hot boiler ash piled against an uninsulated bulkhead next to a magazine, and the rest to causes unknown but old cordite suspected in most. Sabotage was ruled out in all but the Italian ship I think.

It seems that ships using British cordite tended to explode while ships using German cordite did not.
Several German ships did blow up in WW1: the CL Karlsruhe in the Caribbean, the old AC Prinz Adalbert in the Baltic, and of course the predreadnought Pommern at Jutland. The general concensus, however, is that none of these were due to propellant ignition.

Both of the latter 2 ships were sunk by torpedoes, and neither had a torpedo bulkhead. Large German ships of the predreadnought and dreadnought eras had 2ndary magazines all along the sides for every 1 or 2 guns. These magazines contained both shell and propellant in the same room. It's thought in both cases that the torpedo got into one of these magazines and set off the shells, which then set off everything else in the area and beyond.

Nobody really knows what happened to Karlsruhe, but the main suspect is gasoline fumes, rather like that Japanese CV in WW2.

Even the USS Maine used British cordite.
The cordite that started a war :).
 

Bullethead

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One wonders what the fallout from Jutland would have been had the internet been available in 1919 instead of open letters to newspapers. (kind of gives one visions of steam powered Turing machines and telegraph lines to the home. A bunch of guys hunched over punch-card machines, typing like mad.)
Hehehe, I can picture that universe....

"Damn lag, server's steam pressure must be low"

"AFK 5, changing ticker tape reel"

"This server will be down for the coming week while the boiler tubes are replaced"
 

Hood

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I read the British Naval enquiry into loss of HMS Hood ....their summation was penetration of deck armor ,which caused the aft magazines to explode - the explosion went forward through the engineering spaces (the installed vents overwhelmed by force of gas expansion) and detonated the forward magazines (this forward magazine explosion was what some witnesses thought were the forward guns firing)...
So what was the mistake the British made in this engagement ?
That should get them going !
 

HMSWarspite

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I read the British Naval enquiry into loss of HMS Hood ....their summation was penetration of deck armor ,which caused the aft magazines to explode - the explosion went forward through the engineering spaces (the installed vents overwhelmed by force of gas expansion) and detonated the forward magazines (this forward magazine explosion was what some witnesses thought were the forward guns firing)...
So what was the mistake the British made in this engagement ?
That should get them going !
Getting blown up! :laugh:

It was on the cards that Holland would take damage to the Hood, especially once his nicely planned intercept didn't quite work (that is probably the most serious error - caused by lack of decent shadowing info). However he had closed the range to where he wanted and was either turning to port or about to. I do not like the 'should have kept his arcs open' school - leaves him exposed to plunging fire for much longer. Hood's gunnery was probably going to be better that the Germans over say 30 mins instead of 3 salvos, but I do not think Hood should be left exposed. I think he was unlucky. A more 'normal' result (even with PoW doing mostly turret breakdowns) would be Holland hauls off with damage, but not before doing enough to Bismarck to enable her to be caught later on and sunk.

Ironically, that damage, if enough but not too much, might have enabled Hood to have her long awaited modernisation!
 

Bullethead

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Russian dreadnought "Imperiatritsa Maria" also sank due to an internal explosion in 1916.
Yeah, but from what I can tell, the Russian's didn't use Brit cordite. They appear to have had their own blend that was closer chemically to German types, and its behavior in fires fell somewhere between German and Brit. Russian propellant would explode, but it tended to burn for a while first, giving damage control a chance to save the ship, and the explosions weren't as catastrophic as when Brit cordite went off.

In the case of Imperatritsa Maria *, events played out over the course of an hour. There was a magazine fire, apparently from spontaneous combustion, followed by a fairly large explosion, although it did not involve the entire contents of the magazine. This explosion vented upwards and did not affect the buoyancy of the ship. Damage control got to work and there were numerous (as in 1 or 2 dozen) smaller explosions, but the crew seemed to be getting the fire under control. However, about 40 minutes into the fire, there was another large explosion that ripped open the bottom, and the ship rolled over and sank over the next 20 minutes.

Despite all this, the damage wasn't that bad. The Russians actually patched the hull up enough to refloat the inverted ship and bring her into drydock upside down, with the idea of doing complete hull repairs prior to flipping her back over. Hard as that may sound to do, the Italians managed it with Leonardo da Vinci. But Russian project never got that far along.

* Steven McLaughlin, Russian & Soviet Battleships, 306-307.
 
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Fairweather

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Another criticism of Holland in Hood is; why didn't he let Prince of Wales lead? With her superior deck armour, she would have been fine, and could have kept Bismark occupied, even if she only had 3 working 14". According to the crew of the Bismark, Hood's 5th (and last salvo) was a straddle, so she got the range quite quickly.
 

Hinchinbrooke

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Well, she was a glorious looking ship, but Hood should never have been sent out against Bismarck. She should have been relegated to the same status as Repulse and Renown............... to be used only if desperately required. What if Prince of Wales had been fighting with KGV? Could have been a completely different story.
 

wklink

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The problem with that was there were very few Dreadnoughts in the British Navy fast enough to catch the Bismark. Most of the RN ships were WW1 variety ships and the KGV class was just starting to come into its own. Even the Rodney, a more 'modern' ship than the older R class ships was slower than the Bismark. I agree that in a perfect world you would use the Hood as a screening ship or as the ship to hunt down the Scharnhorst class of BCs but the British were pretty much stuck. They had to use what they had.
 
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